ASUS F6V scented notebook gets reviewed: smells pretty good

There's no denying that it can be hard to differentiate your laptop from the masses of rival brands on the market, but we're still not sure ASUS' introduction of scented notebooks is the answer. The F6V series was announced back in September, and the concept is pretty straightforward: the computer smells. Notebook Review took a look to see if it stinks, too.

Four different scents are available to choose from; reviewer James Wong picked the unpleasantly titled "dark musk", which he describes as "polished metal with a bit of aftershave". The scent itself seemingly comes from the heatsink fan inside the F6V, and gets stronger the hotter the laptop runs. It's also started to fade over time, which suggests that after a couple of months you might have to douse your keyboard with Chanel No.5 if you want to maintain that "just stepped away from the perfume counter" impression.

Aside from the smell, the F6V is pretty much a standard notebook. In fact the only other really unusual thing about it is the inclusion of an S-Video to composite adapter, when the laptop doesn't have either of those ports. Performance from the 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo P8400 processor (with 3GB of RAM and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 256MB graphics) is strong, and the 13.3-inch WXGA display has bright colors and broad horizontal viewing angles, only let down by the overly glossy coating. The smell is just a gimmick; thankfully the notebook itself is not.